Adolf's moustache

ADOLF'S MOUSTACHE

Dr Morton Callisto, head of the Department of Experimental History at
the University of Northwest England, wiped the palms of his hands and
considered taking another Cannabisan, but thought better of it. One
more happy pill might send him over the top, into inappropriate
euphoria. Today would be crucial, both for himself and the Department.
He needed a clear head. He must not slip up through some last minute
carelessness. Too much was at stake, extra funding certainly; there had
even been hints of a Chair. Professor of Experimental History. He liked
the sound of that.

It was time he went down to join the rest of the welcoming party. The
royal visitor was almost due. He glanced up at the photograph of Ernst
Goldblum, founder of the discipline, gazing benignly from his frame at
the portrait of the Queen-Empress on the opposite wall.

'Wish me luck,' he thought.

* * *

Fred Aiken let the door of the Extrapolation Lab bang closed behind
him and stood panting heavily.

"Lift out again?" asked Ruby.

He nodded. "If the bloody government," he began when he had the breath,
"had put money into research back in the seventies we could have had
viable atomic energy by now - but oh no, too expensive. So we're stuck
with bloody wind farms that don't work when there's no wind and bloody
solar panels . . . How they expect us to do any decent work when the
equipment's turned off half the time I don't know! Any chance of a
cuppa?"

"Make it yourself, I'm busy." Ruby adjusted one of the knobs on the
Xpol-5. "Damn focus keeps going. Have you got time to brew up?"

"Yeah, plenty." Fred filled the kettle and placed it on the Bunsen
burner in the corner. "They're feeding him tea and buns in the Senior
Common Room first, then he's going to Simulation. He won't be here for
ages yet."

"Well don't make a mess. It took me hours to clear this place
up."

"Mm. Thought it looked unnaturally tidy. Come to that, so do
you."

Ruby patted her hair self consciously. "Someone has to make the
effort." She looked him up and down, specs glinting in disapproval.
"You could have worn a suit."

"I don't have a suit. Where's Eustace?"

"Simulation borrowed him, for the demo. Dave rang in sick. Don't worry,
he can't do
much harm there, and it gets him out from under our feet."

* * *

Five floors below the royal visitor was being treated to a resume of
the theory of Experimental History. Callisto, nerves forgotten, was in
full flow. " . . . and then in 1944 Professor Goldblum presented his
paper on Alternate Causality, applying Saduvic's tensor equations for
n-dimensional space-time to the world-line of a particle in curved
hyperspace, thus laying the foundations of the science of Experimental
History as we know it today."

The visitor's eyes had begun to glaze over. "Most interesting," he
murmured.

"Of course," Callisto continued hurriedly, "there have been great
advances in both interpretation and technique since those first crude
approximations. It is now possible, as you will see, Sir, when we visit
the Simulation Laboratory, to deploy graphically the world-line of any
space-time event, together with its more important shadows."

"Shadows?"

"Those are the alternate world-lines, Sir, which split off from the
main one at every decisive event."

"Thank you, Dr Hazzard." Castillo took over again smoothly. "Of course
most follow the main line very closely - in fact it has been argued
that the main line is composed of an infinite number of almost
identical alternates - but occasionally at a point we call a 'cusp' we
get a very large deviation. It is these deviations which form our main
field of study. By stimulating an alternate line - what we call in
technical terms 'tweaking' - then following its development to the
present day, it is possible to show what would have happened if, for
instance, King Harold had won the Battle of Hastings or the Gunpowder
Plot had not been foiled."

"Fascinating," said the visitor. "You know, one has sometimes wondered
what might have happened if one's great-uncle had not abdicated . . .
"

"Funny you should mention that, Sir," broke in Hazzard. "we ran that
very experiment a few months ago."

"Really? And what difference did it make?"

"Absolutely none whatsoever!" beamed Hazzard.

Castillo shot him a look of pure hatred. "Perhaps, Dr Hazzard, you
would go up to the lab, just to make sure everything is ready?"

The visitor, who had looked a bit flattened, perked up. "Ah yes, must
get on. Time is money, eh? Or should that be, history is money?"

Castillo laughed politely.
* * *

Up in Extrapolation, Ruby was still fiddling with the controls.

"Blast the thing," she muttered. "Has Eustace been messing with
it?"

"Not that I know of." Fred wandered over to the window and set his mug
down on the sill. Outside the rain fell solidly, blotting out the
distant Cumbrian hills. A few bedraggled students still hung around by
the main entrance, clutching their sodden banners, but most of the
protesters had retreated indoors.

"Don't leave that there!" snapped Ruby.

Guiltily Fred removed the mug. "You can't blame Eustace for
everything," he said.

"Why not? Simulation must be mad. Eustace Hazzard may be a brilliant
theoretician but I wouldn't let him near any sensitive apparatus. Not
after what he did to the coffee machine."

"You don't forgive easily, do you?"

"I forgive," said Ruby darkly, "but I never forget."

* * *

"And this, Sir, is our Simulation Laboratory, where our main research
is conducted."

The visitor stared round, bemused, at the banks of instruments and rows
of monitors, focusing at last on the large screen which dominated the
room, almost covering the far wall. It showed what at first sight
appeared to be a great river with innumerable tributaries, or a massive
taproot from which thousands of tiny rootlets sprouted.

"The graphic display shows the last hundred years," went on Castillo.
"Notice the large cluster of shadow-lines in the period 1914-1918,
representing the Great War. The smaller clusters mark events such as
Stalin's assassination, the Sino-Russian War of '51 and the Oil Wars in
the seventies. The period we are interested in is the thirties and
forties - could we have a close-up please? - which as you can see is
clear of any major upheaval." He paused impressively. "But it might not
have been so, as we shall demonstrate.

"The real fascination of this work is its unpredictability. In
accordance with classical Chaos Theory - for as I'm sure you know, Sir,
temporal fluctuations are essentially chaotic. Nothing can be exactly
repeated, every alternate we produce is unique. The consequences of the
most minor deviation can be immense, even world-shattering. In our
example, an unimportant man performs an unimportant act and yet we
shall show that if he had not done so the entire course of the
twentieth century would have changed. Imagine, if you will, a world in
which the British Empire no longer exists!"

The visitor looked as if he would rather not. "It is - er - quite safe,
I take it?"

"Of course, Sir, of course. It is merely a simulation. The main line is
inviolate - once fixed it cannot be changed. The past, after all, is
past."

"Not necessarily." Eustace, who had been fine-tuning the controls on
the main simulator, looked up from his monitor as they passed.
"Goldblum's equations don't actually forbid it, but nobody's ever dared
try."

"Why, what would happen?"

"Well, theoretically it could induce a tau-wave, that's a temporal
probability wave, which would sweep along the main world line, changing
all before it."

"Dear me," said the visitor.

Castillo bared his teeth. "Dr Hazzard produces science fiction. In his
spare time. Believe me, the past cannot be changed because it has not
been changed!"

"How would we know?" murmured Eustace.

* * *

"It's no use!" Ruby thumped the grey metal casing in frustration. "This
bloody thing's clapped out. It should have been replaced years
ago."

Fred strolled over and cast his eye over the readings.

"You're right at the limit of its range, no wonder you're not getting
anything. Pull in closer."

"But nothing ever happens round here. I wanted to show him the result
of the 3.30 at Kendal, ten minutes before it happened! That would
really have made him sit up and take notice."

"Maybe, but you'd better start recallibrating, or there'll be nothing
to show him at all. They'll be here soon. Never mind, love. If Castillo
works things right we might all get new equipment. As long as Eustace
doesn't muck up the demo," he added.

"Huh! Castillo's not a scientist, he's a historian." Her voice quivered
with disgust. "He'll pay out for that stupid great display screen while
the real work has to scrape by on a pittance. D'you know, in Bern they
can extrapolate a full forty five minutes ahead? And I've heard the new
Series 7 can do up to an hour. If we had that sort of range . . . I
mean ten minutes is nothing. Even if you spot a cusp coming, by the
time you get a proper fix and run the evaluation the damn thing's past.
But if you could catch it while it's still far a enough away - work out
its potential - tweak if before it arrives if you have to - that's
where the real challenge lies! Not with a load of historians, poncing
around in their alternate pasts."

"You'd better set something up then, if you want to impress H.R.H.
Show him his next ten minutes. That always goes down well, no matter
how dull it is."

* * *

"The man we are interested in," said Castillo, " was a total nonentity.
An Austrian painter of little talent and less success, totally unknown
to history."

The visitor coughed. "If he's unknown, how can you tell he's one of
these cusp thingummies?"

Castillo floundered for a moment. Intelligent questions were not part
of the script.

"Er, yes. Well. You see that huge cluster of shadow-lines at the end of
the thirties? Nothing in the main line to cause them but if you trace
them back you will see that they all converge on a single strand. Where
it leaves the main line, there's your cusp.
So," he continued, getting back into his stride, "our man wandered
around Germany in the nineteen-twenties, settling nowhere for long,
until one day he took a fancy to the daughter of the inn where he
happened to be staying. She agreed to go out with him, on one condition
- that he shaved off his moustache. A few months later they married,
rather hurriedly. Our young man had been involved in politics of the
more extreme variety, but of course with a wife, and a child on the
way, he had to give all that up. His father-in-law, who owned a brewery
as well as the inn, would not have approved. Well, he worked for many
years in the brewery, finally inheriting it. He, and his business,
prospered. He took up politics again in middle age, eventually becoming
Burgomaster, and died in the sixties, a respected citizen.

"And now - if you are ready, Dr Hazzard - we would like to show you
what would have happened if our young man - Adolf, I think he was
called - had decided not to shave off his moustache."

* * *

"Fred!"

Ruby's voice sounded strange. Fred swung round to see her staring
fixedly at her monitor screen. "What is it?"

"It's a cusp. But it's huge. It's gigantic! I - I've never seen
anything this big."

"Have you got a fix? Where is it? How long have we got?"

"It's here. Now!"

"Here?" He looked around wildly. "But nothing's happening here. What
could possibly - ?"

Their eyes met in dawning apprehension.
"Eustace!"

* * *

Oblivious of the dignitaries crowding around him, Eustace concentrated
on the monitor screen, searching for the one strand he needed among
dozens of tightly packed alternates. With one hand he adjusted the
tuner, while the other held the tweaker button, ready to deliver a
measured pulse of energy.

Then the door banged open. Startled, Eustace swung round, his hands
violently jerking at the controls.

"STOP!" Fred stood in the doorway, Ruby just behind him. "Eustace!
Whatever you're doing, stop it!"

A confused babble of voices broke out, gradually dying away as people
looked up and began to take in what was happening on the main
screen.

A horrified whisper broke the silence. "Oh my God. He's tweaked the
main line!"

"Do something!" screamed Castillo. "Tweak it back!"

"Can't," Eustace replied flatly. "It's a chaotic system. You never get
the same result twice."

They watched, fascinated. The main line writhed like a snake, clusters
of alternates flowering and dying as the wave front surged along its
length. 1835. 1936. Fred found he was holding Ruby by the hand.

"I'm frightened," she whispered.

1940, '41. Throughout the world, millions of people ceased to be,
instantly replaced by other millions whose conception had just become
possible. The room seemed to shimmer. Fred looked round. Surely there
were fewer people here than there had been a moment ago?

"I say. Can't someone tell me what's - "

1943. Professor Ernst Goldblum, distinguished physicist and founder of
the science of Experimental History, starved to death in Belsen, and
instantly the Simulation Laboratory, the Department, indeed the entire
University, had never existed.

* * *

Evan Hazzard, arriving for the afternoon shift, noticed the crowd by
the main gate. Some were waving flags, others placards. Of course, he
remembered now. Some sort of royal visit. Nothing to do with him, thank
goodness. A thin line of blue kept the flag and placard-wavers apart.
Evan had a brief glimpse of 'skull and crossbones' motifs and 'BAN
NUCLEAR ENERGY'. Idiots. What did they think they could use instead?
Windmills?

He waited in line at the barrier. The rain fell, battering the roof of
the car, but it could not dowse his good humour. Only that morning he
had had a story, his first, accepted by a
leading science fiction magazine. The letter nestled now in his breast
pocket, like a talisman. He was hoping for a quiet, routine shift.
Somehow he felt his mind might not be entirely on the job today.
Grinning cheerfully at the guard who waved him on, he drove past the
barrier and the gates of Sellafield closed behind him.